Hello everyone.
This is not about saving and investing for your retirement.
To start off I realize most of you great folks do not, would not, could care less, a waste of precious time, etc know how much money do you actually save using minimal effort in the process.
A little history
Back in 2015 I had a reputation at work for being the one who knew how to get the best deals, maximize credit card rewards, using cashback portals, where to get coupons. Everyone said I must save a ton of money. I thought how much do I really save? Since I have been using Quicken to track every penny I have spent since the early 90’s I thought maybe I could track it in Quicken.
I came up with making tags in Quicken to track how I saved money. The only rule was in order to claim the savings I had to make some minimal effort. I couldn’t count going to a store and an item was on sale. If I had to find or clip a coupon then it counted.
Some tags I created:
Coupons
Credit card rewards
Negotiations
Gift card discounts
Cashback portals
Reward point programs
Many others
So how much have I actually saved? YTD I have saved $3,860.48.
Take a guess how much I have saved since June 2015.
$40,977.07 - $6,556.33 a year - $546.36 a month.
Not bad for something that really doesn’t require that much time, although, again, I realize that for the majority this is a complete waste of time to track this.
Top tags $17,332.39 in credit card rewards – typically flights, hotels, cabins, etc, $8,808.01 using coupons, $2,453.61 buying gift cards using credit card rewards, $2,402.08 buying gift cards at a discount.
How much have you saved or what type of activities/programs do you use to save? I'm always open for new strategies.
Kevin